How AI is Helping Smart Glasses Come Into Their Own
Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
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Given the short-lived Google Glass, it’s easy to understand why smart glasses aren’t going to be entering the mainstream any time soon. Fortunately, that’s all changing as emerging technologies continue to improve.
Many tech, healthcare, and even fashion companies are seeing the value of investing in creating and designing smart eyewear, especially as more people embrace wearable technology. As a result, the global smart glasses market is now expected to register a compound annual growth rate of 9.5% up until 2028 after recording a $218.86 million market value in 2022. Industry experts attribute this market growth to shifting consumer preferences and the powerful hold that brands have over digital native consumers like millennials. Today, most smart glasses use augmented reality (AR) to provide wearers with digital displays, allowing eyewear to work as a smartphone extension. Over time, more companies continue to integrate other emerging technologies, chief among which is artificial intelligence (AI).
This includes eyewear industry leader Ray-Ban, best known for releasing distinctly stylish frames that stand out among the sunglasses sold by major retailers. Models like the Aviator, for example, remain bestsellers on Eyebuydirect despite being designed in the ’40s. Despite this, Ray-Ban heavily invests in innovating its products, as exemplified in its bio-based and Reverse collections, the latter of which boasts inward-curving lenses. Its latest venture involves partnering with Facebook’s parent company, Meta, to create truly tech-savvy eyewear. The new Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, released in 2023, recently introduced its built-in Meta AI assistant. It’s a conversational assistant wearers can speak to by simply saying, “Hey Meta.” In doing so, they can use these smart glasses can make calls, send texts, control features, and answer random questions you may have throughout the day—without having to unlock their smartphone.
The Ray-Ban x Meta collaboration is among many brands and companies experimenting with AI integration in smart glasses technology. As more companies continue to innovate, we’re now seeing more use cases of AI smart glasses in our day-to-day lives, ranging from broad, everyday functions to specific and niche purposes. Here are just three instances of AI helping smart glasses come into their own:
Instructional and occupational use cases
AI integration in smart glasses can help wearers access essential information via voice or touch controls. For smart glasses with AR capabilities, this information can also be shown through a heads-up display, which wearers can see through the lenses. These features were clearly illustrated when eyewear company Vuzix showcased its new AI-enabled smart glasses line at the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
The demonstrations planned at the Vuzix booth allowed visitors to see and experience common medical use cases involving smart glasses, including device selection and management, surgical protocols, and even brain surgery. For other occupational and instructional uses, Vuzix also unveiled its Shield smart glasses for niche applications such as rebooting cell towers, as well as the Ultralite OEM Platform smart glasses—which boast a connected finger scanner—for inventory management in retail logistics.
ChatGPT integration
Nowadays, discussing AI is impossible without mentioning ChatGPT, OpenAI’s free-to-use AI system based on a large language model. That’s why it’s only natural that many smart glasses that integrate AI use this “chatbot” and its AI capabilities. One of the companies that have released such products is Innovative Eyewear, which helps even lifestyle brands like Reebok—most famous for its sports gear—develop smart glasses.
Another brand it runs is Lucyd, through which it released Lucyd Audio Eyewear. These are the first smart glasses to leverage ChatGPT through a smartphone app, enabling a voice interface that allows wearers to speak queries hands-free, hear human-like responses, take calls, and even play music. Currently, the industry is eyeing the potential benefits of ChatGPT-enabled smart glasses in helping students access information to improve performance and productivity in school. At the same time, the education technology industry can contribute by leveraging these AI-enabled eyewear to create innovative and engaging learning tools to improve learning outcomes.
Assistive technology
Finally, aside from work and study, there is great potential for AI smart glasses to be used as assistive technology for persons with disabilities. That’s exemplified by assistive tech company Lumen’s CES 2024 smart glasses showcase. The company specifically designed them to aid those living with vision loss, describing the eyewear as “replicating the main features of a guide dog.” It uses the same technology as self-driving vehicles to help wearers navigate their environment. More than 250 blind individuals have tested the glasses, which are now in the clinical investigation stage.
This isn’t the first foray into wearable technology as assistive technology. Pakistani have previously used assistive technology systems involving a novel “acoustic touch” feature to study human echolocation—or the ability to detect objects in the environment by creating sounds that bounce off them. Like all the AI smart eyewear mentioned so far, smart glasses with acoustic touch integrations also use a camera, a mic, and a deep learning model for object recognition purposes, all beneficial features that can supplement the senses impaired in persons with disabilities.
With AI, we’re finally seeing smart glasses come into their own. As we see more of the use cases and benefits they offer, it’ll be interesting to see how tech and eyewear companies adapt these innovations to make them a mainstay in our daily lives.
